The Process of Piloting

Daniel Jacobs is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He was awarded a Fall 2017 Independent Grant which he used to conduct research on attention under Dr. Daniel Dilks. 

After spending hours sitting with my PI and graduate mentors, mulling over the concepts for our new project, I expected the execution of the experiment to go relatively smoothly. We hashed out all of our ideas and concerns regarding the methods. All that was left was to implement our plans and analyze the results, right? Unfortunately, things did not go as smoothly as we had hoped. No amount of time creating stimuli or losing sleep over an unenthusiastic participant could have prepared me for the unexpected hiccups of a research endeavor.

I first realized how crucial it is to roll with unanticipated roadblocks during my research experience was when I was preparing stimuli to be used for our behavioral study. My mentors gave me creative flexibility to create a batch of images that we would then use in order to gain preliminary data for our experiment. I initially thought that the process of making stimuli would be a breeze. It took me several weeks to think of designs for the stimuli I was going to make. I would scribble down my thoughts regarding the images as they came to me during class, lab hours, and meetings. I anticipated that creating stimuli for our project would take a matter of days, but in reality creating the perfect images for a study takes a long time. Once I felt like I had the right ideas, I made a batch of prototypes to show my mentors. Most of the images were ready for testing, but a few needed to be adjusted to ensure that the tasks for which the stimuli would be used would not be too difficult for our participants. After finalizing and clearing the images with my graduate mentor and PI, I thought the rest of the piloting process would be smooth sailing. I walked into lab one Wednesday afternoon to find Jack, our incredibly helpful IT worker, sitting at the desk looking at the computer that contained all of my stimuli. Half of the images that I saved on this computer disappeared. After a few minutes of hectic searching, I realized that the only solution was to buckle down and recreate the lost images. This had to be the worst thing that could happen in the piloting process, right? Wrong. This too served as a learning experience, as the creation of the stimuli was only the beginning of the process for piloting.

Before I began piloting this study, I thought that running student participants would be a relatively seamless process. Many students found the idea of acting as a crucial part of a real research project fascinating. Some students asked me questions that granted me a fresh perspective on our project. However, some students saw the participation as something that was merely necessary to pass their psychology course. Though I appreciated all of their time, some students would not put a significant amount of effort into the tasks. I would ask that they pay close attention, stay fixated on a center cross, or attend to certain details of an image, but at the end of the day all that was left were the data given by the students' responses. No matter how many times I explained the tasks, some students did not care enough to try to accurately complete the study. Although I had the ability to withhold participation credit for any given student, I was still left with a waste of my time, the lab's time, and the students' time. No amount of planning what to say or writing of a script to read to participants could prepare me for an unenthusiastic participant.

As piloting for my study draws to a close, and the stages of fMRI scanning begin, I look forward to the rest of the semester in lab. Through my experiences with this research project, I have been exposed to problems that have helped me become a more capable researcher and student as a whole. My advice to any future researcher would be to plan and prepare as much as you can, but be resilient and ready for the unexpected hiccups that come with any research venture.

Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Independent Research Grants.